Emmanuelle Sharon
Commander Emmanuelle Sharon was an Infiltrator in the Systems Alliance military, and the Commanding Officer of the SSV Belgrade. History Early Life Born Emmanuelle Shepard on Mindoir in 2154 CE, the future commander was one of the few survivors of the brutal batarian raids in 2170 CE, in which she lost her entire family and her home (her surname was legally changed two years later, after the Alliance discovered that a batarian hacker attempting to access the records of the incident.) With few other options, she enlisted in the Alliance military at age 18. During her training, her instructors were impressed with her determination to go beyond the minimum requirements of each mission, though some of them noted that she often focused on details at the expense of the "big picture". Ypres When she graduated from the N7 special forces program, the Alliance brass assigned her to the SSV Ypres. The Ypres had been running a very swift and efficient operation, but the Alliance was concerned about Commander James Skinner, an Earth-born Sentinel with a penchant for breaking rules to get the job done. Skinner had been credited with ensuring the Alliance victory in the Battle of Torfan, but his commanding officer, Major Kyle, had been deeply disturbed by the ruthlessness that he'd displayed there. The Alliance hoped that Sharon would be able to reduce the casualties that Skinner's actions incurred. Neither Sharon or Skinner liked the idea of being each other's foil, but it produced results that impressed the Alliance, particularly during the "Oiwa Incident", in which an unauthorized VI took control of Nakamuraza Station and attempted to shut it down out of rage at being "rejected" by her programmer. Sharon managed to reason with the VI and convince it to let almost all of the station's inhabitants evacuate while Skinner supposedly introduced a virus that purged the VI from the system while leaving the station operational. Thanks to this strategy, the only casualty was the programmer, who apparently killed himself out of shame (a later investigation would reveal evidence suggesting that Skinner had, in fact, killed the programmer in order to trigger a fail-safe that neutralized the VI, but this was never conclusively proven.) The Lorek Mission Working together, Sharon and Skinner quickly rose through the ranks, but everything changed in 2181 CE. They were both on leave when they were contacted by the asari Matriarch Eumenidia, who offered them a large sum of credits in exchange for a very special job. The Matriach's daughter, Siani, was a commando with the Livis company. The Livis had been sent to Lorek to defuse a rapidly worsening skirmish between the Esan Liberation Army and the Batarian Hegemony, and had instead become pinned down, and thus Eumenidia wished to hire Sharon and Skinner to extract her daughter. Neither Sharon nor Fletcher were eager to take the job, but memories of what the batarians had done to her home convinced Sharon to accept, and Skinner refused to let her go off on her own, and so they ended up accompanying a small army of asari mercenaries to Lorek. Based on the information they had received prior to departure, Sharon believed that she and Skinner would easily rescue Siani. Upon arriving, however, they discovered that the batarians' numbers were nearly three times the number that they had been given. Eumenidia had tricked them, intending for them to be captured or killed in the hopes that their deaths would draw the Alliance fleet into the conflict, thus sparking a war that might force the batarians to give up the territory that they had captured from the asari nearly three centuries earlier. Against all odds, Skinner and Sharon managed to lead their hired army to clear a path to Siani, but just before they reached their ship, they were set upon by another wave of batarians. Skinner led the remains of their army to hold the batarians back long enough for Sharon to carry Siani onto the ship, but he turned his attention towards the ship for one second too long, and in that second a batarian Specialist's knife caught him in the face. Seeing him fall, Sharon went back to rescue him and ended up getting attacked by another Specialist. Bruised and bleeding, Skinner took advantage of the first Specialist's brief distraction to grab the pistol off of his back. He shot both Specialists dead and carried a barely-conscious Sharon back to their ship. As the ship took off, Skinner launched a missile at a nearby batarian fueling station, creating an explosion that carried over to a neighboring settlement, killing and maiming several dozen civilians. In later testimony, he claimed that he'd only fired on the fueling station to destroy the batarian's ships and thus prevent aerial pursuit. Sharon, Emmanuelle Sharon, Emmanuelle Sharon, Emmanuelle Sharon, Emmanuelle